Henry David Thoreau Life Quotations

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.

Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.

Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.

Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.

The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.

The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.

If an injustice requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the government machine.

A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.

Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.

My Aunt Maria asked me to read the life of Dr. Chalmers,which, however, I did not promise to do.Yesterday, Sunday, she was heard through the partitionshouting to my Aunt Jane, who is deaf, 'Think of it!He stood half an hour today to hear the frogs croak,and he wouldn't read the life of Chalmers.'

I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

I have learned this at least by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dream, and endeavors to live the life which he had imagines, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.

If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal -- that is your success. All nature is your congratulation . . .

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.

I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die Discover that I had not lived.

Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake.

As to conforming outwardly, and living your own life inwardly, I have not a very high opinion of that course.

If one advances confidently in the direction of one's dreams, and endeavors to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

If one advances confidently in the directions of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in Nature- daily to be shown matter, To come in contact with it- rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks. The solid earth! . . .

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioning ability of man to evaluate his life by a conscious endeavor

Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping.

Live in each season as it passes: breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit.

Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are.

No human being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does.

Do not suffer your life to be taken by newspapers.

In the production of the necessaries of life Nature is ready enough to assist man.

The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover it was never fish that you were after.

The great art of life is how to turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body.

To be awake is to be alive.

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust.

City life is millions of people being lonesome together.

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

If the day and night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal - that is your success.

This life is not for complaint, but for satisfaction.

Your religion is where your love is.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.

Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!....

We live but a fraction of our lives.

Waves of a serene life pass over us from time to time, like flakes of sunlight over the fields in cloudy weather.

Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

Our thoughts are epochs in our lives; all else is but as a journal of the winds that blow while we are here.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.

As to conforming outwardly and living your own life inwardly, I do not think much of that.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it.

I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself.

One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something.

Do not despair of your life. You have force enough to overcome your obstacles.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?

As a preacher, I should be prompted to tell men, not so much how to get their wheat bread cheaper, as of the bread of life compared with which that is bran. Let a man only taste these loaves, and he becomes a skillful economist at once.

Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it.

Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage.

Love your life, poor as it is.

The little things in life are as interesting as the big ones.

Go confidently ... Live the life that you imagined.

To see wild life you must go forth at wild season.

None can lead this life who are not almost amphibious.

Let go of the past and live the future . . . Live the life you imagined.

Endeavor to live the life you have imagined.

Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life. This life in the present.

He who parades his virtues seldom leads the parade. He who puts up with insult invites injury. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life. This life in the present.

Live the life you've dreamed.

There is always a present and extant life, be it better or worse, which all combine to uphold.

Be it life or death, we crave only reality.

I do not know how to distinguish between waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?